Destination Vacation--Across the Street

This year, the Cleveland International Piano Competition is being held at the Bolton Theater in the Cleveland Playhouse for the first and probably only time because of remodeling at its usual site at CIM.


It's my lucky year because:

1. I'm almost totally off work and in town during the entire competition
2. I can afford a splurge, and
3. The Playhouse is a 5 minute walk from our house!

Since this magical planetary alignment may never again be replicated, I've splurged on a subscription to all the rounds for a total immersion experience, about 50 hours of live music in the space of 12 days! I've been listening for about 6 hours a day during these first rounds, and though it is a lot to digest and sometimes wears my brain out, I have heard a lot of exciting piano playing.

Some of these people are half my age and all can play circles around me. In earlier years this might have dragged up feelings of inadequacy (i.e., There But For Procrastination, Lack of Sufficient Drive, and Laziness Could have Gone I). But I love and am good at what I do in my little niche of the music world. Since I don't particularly enjoy the tedious kind of practicing it takes, I don't think the competition circuit/concert pianist path was meant to be my destiny.

But these pianists! Everyone here has already won numerous other competitions, and it's easy to see why. For the most part, they all have huge dynamic and color ranges and something compelling to communicate. There's a lot of music I haven't heard before, or at least don't know well. Sometimes a little part of my brain, always on the lookout, will think, "Hmm. I like that melody. I bet I could fit that into something for ballet class..."

Primate tendencies

We were eating tuna salad sandwiches for dinner, and Paul got a blob of food stuck to his cheek. I picked it off his face instead of saying something. He immediately used a napkin to wipe, saying, "My sweetie has primate tendencies."

It finally occured to me to ask after all these years, "Does it bug you when I do that?"

"Sometimes."

"Sorry!" I said. Wow, the first time he's ever admitted something I do bugs him, and I had to ask or I would never have known.

He said, "Sometimes I think it's sweet, but sometimes I get a parental vibe from it."

"Makes sense," I said. "And if I licked it off your face, I guess it could have a.....
....sort of 'puppy dog' vibe to it, couldn't it? Not the sort of vibe you're looking for."

Exactly. "We'd like to keep the bestiality or incest vibes out of our vibe repertoire, right?" he said jokingly.

Inspiration struck me. I can just see one of those supermarket checkout line mags geared to tired housewives, like Women's Day, Good Housekeeping, etc. They always have the same headlines every month--Melt the Pounds Away in 14 Days While Eating Anything You Want (next to a picture of a birthday cake in the shape of a train) , How to Get More Energy, Protect Your Kids From the Bogeyman o' the Month, and my favorite, How to Get That Spark Back Into Your Marriage.

Relight the Passionate Fires in Your Marriage With These Easy Bestiality and Incest Roleplaying Games!

New Hits for My Brother in the Deep Recesses of Google

I was reading an entry on Eric's blog the other day about how different search engines have such varying results when searching for one's own name. He is very happy with Yahoo and MSN Search because on both of them, his blog is the first hit for his name.

Having almost a whole day off today, I was inspired to play with search engines. Haven't done this in ages, but I started putting quotes around the names I searched for, which dramatically improved the results. All of the results for my name were actually about me, and thanks to Dad's handiwork, www.karint.com made the first page! Wohoo!! I guess there aren't any other Karin Tooleys out there. :-)

There are a few other Eric Tooleys, however, one of them a teen abstinence crusader, much to Eric's chagrin. However, there is also an athlete and a coffee cup artist, whose site I thought is pretty cool.

I found some pretty cute photos of Eric and Rusty, evidently from a wedding they attended a couple of years ago:

I know, I have waay too much time on my hands today, but this was fun. Besides, it gave me another excuse to link to your blog, Eric!

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

Check this out. I have finally figured out how to include more than one picture on a post. :-)

Yesterday we had a great time with the Bokuniewiczes. After waking up around 9:30ish, the seven of us gathered around the newly clean and uncluttered kitchen table and breakfast bar while Paul made toast and fried eggs and I prepared coffee, orange juice and fresh fruit.

Paul, Marina and I practiced our trio together for the first time. It actually was pretty smooth going for the most part, each of us having practiced and listened to the CD for the past couple of months. After an hour and a half, we decided to quit while we were ahead, knowing it would be fine for today's performance.

I love that we live so close to everything. We were able to leave at 2:40, drive the 4 miles to downtown, find parking, walk to Jacobs Field and find our seats at a leisurely pace, and still be on time for a 3:15 baseball game.

Check out Paul's hat:
He, Tom and Marina all graduated from Oberlin, so this Oberlin Conservatory hat was a hit.

Here's another gratuitously cute couple pic, courtesy of Marina:

This panorama shot came out really skinny because I stitched it from 7 pics.Paul and Marina are close-up on the left.It was a gorgeous day, sunny, in the 80s and not humid, our seats were in the shade, and the Indians won in an exciting 9th inning. All the pics from yesterday can be seen here.*

As far as the performance at today's service, it went pretty well. Not flawlessly, but that didn't bother us. It was Paul's first public performance in 20 years, and I thought he sounded beautiful. In fact, I think the music was the high point of the service! :-)

They Bokunowitzes decided to go home today instead of tomorrow, so Paul and I have spent the afternoon reading the paper and doing a little clean-up, a very atypical Sunday for us. Usually we would both be working! The downtime feels good.

*My website, www.karint.com, now has my full name as a header on it and a link to this blog, making both much more visible on search engines. I didn't even notice until I uploaded the pics today. Thanks so much, Dad! xo

Toilet tsunami

After a wonderfully fun day rehearsing the Reinecke trio, attending the Indians game, and going out to dinner at The Diner on Clifton, there was a clogging incident. I was running the dishwasher at the time. (This is important later, I promise.)

Tom went upstairs to get our Jet Plunger, used it to pump a ferocious blast of air down the toilet--
--and the toilet started vomiting up copious amounts of water all over the bathroom floor! Poor Tom yelled a request for towels. They hardly made a dent, as the water was now at least an inch deep. I brought up rolls of paper towels and the wastebasket. He turned off the valve for the tank and plunged again, and it overflowed even more.

Oh, by the way, Paul had stopped by work to check a machine, so it was just clueless me at home. What do I know about this stuff? So I called the plumber who offers emergency service day or night, who said they would put out the call and someone would call back soon.

Our poor guests! My first reaction was to tell them I clog up the toilet all the time (that's why we got the Jet Plunger in the first place, the regular one sometimes couldn't make a dent in my disasters!) and it so easily could have been me that this happened to, if they hadn't happened to be visiting this weekend. I wasn't even freaking out, and felt the urge to lighten the mood with jokes. Shit happens!

When Paul got home, he immediately knew something was wrong, because water was dripping out of the light fixture all over the garage. Unfortunately, most of our shoes were directly in the line of fire, so we moved them as quickly as possible. When he came in and took in the situation, he immediately realized the running dishwasher was contributing to the overflow, so we immediately stopped it.

Well, our wonderful plumber just came and snaked it out at about 12:15 am. This whole situation was just striking me funny--it was like a bad movie comedy. (Later I had a hard time falling asleep because I kept getting giggle fits for 45 minutes.) I said our toilet has an eating disorder--bulimia. And Irritable Bowl Syndrome. I tell you, I was really on a roll. Paul and I suggested it was worth the investment to purchase and install 3 new power-assisted toilets next month. "All three?" I had to ask.

"Well, you do use the one in the bedroom," he says. :-D

Somebody loves him!

Here's a pic for your enjoyment. This is an illustration for the post below.

Is Karl Rove gay?

We've been cleaning up the house like mad for our guests this weekend. It looks beautiful. Just think, if we cared enough, it could look like this more than once a year! They were supposed to be here about now, but Marina just called from Toledo, where they got stuck having a blown-out tire repaired. I told them not to worry, we usually go to bed around 12:30-1:00 am and don't have to work tomorrow, so they can come as late as they want.

The other night, Paul and I were speculating on Karl Rove's personal life, or rather, complete lack of one. Most of Bush's crowd feels it's de rigeur to get married and have kids, and apparently, he's done neither. Paul thinks maybe he's gay and in the closet. A hypocrisy expose is always entertaining, so we googled "Karl Rove gay," hoping to hit paydirt.

738,00 hits! Most of them, disappointingly, only linked Rove and the phrase "anti-gay agenda" or somesuch. I did, however, find some interesting out-there lefty blog entries here, here and here. Maddeningly, everything is still just speculation. It's actually not surprising that the spinmeister would have such control over information leaked about himself. I found a couple of sites that said he'd been married twice and had a son, but others saying he'd never married. Well, if he had married and really had a son, what I want to know is, how come this is never once mentioned in any bio? I find that very strange.

I did find a little gem in my surfing that just made me laugh, it was so "pink" and silly. I emailed the link to Trent (of Pink is the New Blog), and he included it in the news section of yesterday's entry! In his words: Who knew that GWB had a blog of his own. :-D

Coming up for air...

It is such a joy to be posting from home again. We got our new motherboard installed on Monday, but did I celebrate by immediately posting here? Heck no. I was too busy catching up on all of my daily email newsletters from the New York Times and salon.com, two of my favorite sources for news. Also, the hilarious Pink is the New Blog, my favorite mental junk food.

When not on the computer, I've been practicing the Trio for piano, oboe & horn in A minor, Op 188 by Carl Reinecke (hear samples here). A couple who knew Paul from Oberlin days, Tom Bokuniewicz and Marina Jaffe, are coming to stay with us next weekend, along with their 3 college-aged boys, while on their national baseball tour vacation. Marina was an oboe major at Oberlin. She doesn't play that much now but is really looking forward to us getting to play some chamber music. This was Paul's idea. The piece isn't that hard, but certainly isn't simple and has required some practicing. We even have a performance opportunity--we'll be playing it for July 24's service at the UU Society of Cleveland.

Hello from the library

Our online access is still out. Since three days over the past week were not business days, the new motherboard for our computer won't be delivered until tomorrow (Friday). The Best Buy repair guys are already booked tomorrow (of course) so if we're lucky, the earliest the computer can be fixed will be Monday. At least they called today to tell me. I was beginning to wonder if the trouble ticket paperwork actually went through.

So here I am at the library, where I have exactly 60 minutes per day I am allowed to log on. It's amazing how much more efficient I've been, doing only the essentials (checking and answering email, checking blogs of family and friends), with maybe 15 minutes left to read a few articles. It makes me realize how much of my time usually gets sucked up by frivolous internet surfing.

I've had time to clean up my office (a tri-annual ritual) in anticipation of a visit in 2 weeks by two of Paul's out-of-town Oberlin friends plus their 3 college-aged sons. It's funny how I'm somehow motivated to clean up for company but not very much if it's just us benefitting from it.

Body Worlds

Yesterday we spent the 4th at the Great Lakes Science Center. We went to the BodyWorlds 2 exhibition, a bizarrely fascinating collection of real human bodies preserved by a process called plastination, and displayed in such a way that you could see all the muscles, systems, etc. as well as bones. Some of them were posed doing things like ice skating or spear throwing, to show how the muscles look different when stretched or flexed.

This is one of the things some people find controversial about it--it was part science, part art, and part sideshow. I, of course, have no trouble admitting to morbid fascination. I also felt awe, amazement, occasional ickiness, and even a sense of the holy. There were also a few animals--a horse, camel and rabbit. I couldn't help but notice how similar the basic building materials were for the humans and animals--only the form, size and shape varied. It seems undeniable to me that we all descended from the same common ancestors.

Technical Difficulties

This week I've learned that I have a very low irritation threshhhold when it comes to malfunctioning technology. Well, actually I already knew that, it was just more forceably brought to my attention. For months, our DSL connection has been finicky and unpredictable, disconnecting on a whim, sometimes several times a day, often freezing and necessitating restarting the computer. Now, I know it isn't supposed to be this way, but you do sort of get used to it.

Well, this past Tuesday, I had left the computer on while leaving the room to do something else. A thunderstorm came through, and I didn't think about the (still plugged in and connected) computer until after a thunderclap that sounded so loud and close it was scary. We didn't lose power or anything, but I heard the telltale error squeal of a lost connection. I shut down the computer as usual and thought nothing further of it.

Unfortunately, the modem (3 years old) only showed the power light and never connected again. I called the DSL tech support line. After a check of our phone line showed nothing wrong, I ordered a new modem, thinking, Oh, they do wear out eventually, and this ought to solve the problem. I even paid extra for next business day delivery.

Well, the new modem came yesterday. I set it up, turned everything on, and--still no connection. Suddenly, the room seemed unbearably hot. I was muttering the phrase "What a pain in the ass!" with alarming frequency. Paul came in to help, uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers for the ethernet card. We tried different ethernet cables. No difference.

At this time, a DSL tech support guy called, having tried to ping our modem. Perfect timing, I thought. He was really helpful. After eliminating every other possibility, we concluded the ethernet card must be bad. Paul opened the computer only to discover that there was no separate ethernet card, it was all part of the main motherboard. So much for running to Best Buy for a spare part.

Luckily, I found the computer's receipt from Best Buy and 3-year In-Home Service Contract we had sprung $200.00 for, which still has another year+ on it. I called the number, and it was like being in the First Class ticket line at the Airport. Only the Little People have to haul their computers out to the store (which then have to be shipped to an authorized repair facility and shipped back) and wait about 2 weeks to have a functioning machine again. Not us! I did some troubleshooting with this guy, too, reconfirming the bad ethernet card diagnosis. He says they will order the part, then when the part comes in, a serviceman will call to make an appointment to come to our home and install a new motherboard, all at no charge, probably sometime this coming week.

Even though we still can't get online at home (I'm typing this in the library), I just feel better knowing what the problem is and having done what it takes to fix it. I must say, this involuntary internet holiday hasn't exactly been a bad thing. I've been spending a lot more time practicing and reading. I think this means a cutback in Idiot Box time is called for.